Partnerships a solution for transportation funding?

The state’s budget crunch might be a new opening for trying public-private partnerships to fund transportation projects, according to Matt Rosenberg, a senior fellow at Seattle’s Cascadia Center For Regional Development.

“When California recently resolved its mammoth budget deficit, it also moved to ease restrictions on transportation public-private partnerships, a politically controversial idea that over the long run could help control costs to taxpayers of improving overloaded roads, rails, and freight facilities,” Rosenberg wrote on Crosscut.

Under the system, private consortiums may design, build and help finance tolled roads and bridges, and then operate and maintain them for several decades under leases with government agencies. The idea is that investors make a profit, while taxpayers save money.

Rosenberg lays out a detailed case in support of the idea. Anyone want to stand up for the opposition?